


It’s Only Kidding Around Until Someone Gets Horny

by Deejaymil



Category: Criminal Minds (US TV)
Genre: A haircut designed by a higher power, Emily and Reid rescue a goat, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Falling In Love, Massage, Post-Season/Series 12, Resolved Sexual Tension, Road Trips, Sharing a Bed, Spencer's having a very startling day
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-26
Updated: 2018-08-26
Packaged: 2019-06-24 17:53:46
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,742
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15635757
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Deejaymil/pseuds/Deejaymil
Summary: Reid is having a normal, everyday, nothing-interesting kind of day, right until Emily brings that day to a very abrupt and startling end. Now he's stuck on the road trip from hell with a woman he adores, trying to pretend that he isn't captivated by everything she is and continues to be.And maybe he would have gotten away with it too, if it hadn't been for the goat.





	It’s Only Kidding Around Until Someone Gets Horny

**Author's Note:**

  * For [FestiveFerret](https://archiveofourown.org/users/FestiveFerret/gifts).



> _AN: Bingo Bango Bongo fill for the squares “There’s a goat in this square (smut version)” , "massage (shippy version), and “bed-sharing”, with added inspiration from[this gif of PB's new hair.](https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/414091365345918977/462717870107918336/whats_haPPENIN.gif)_
> 
> To my dear Ferret, the goat in this is a gift to you ;)

It’s a normal, everyday, nothing-interesting kind of day and Reid is content to know that absolutely nothing is coming that will startle or shock him. It’s just not that kind of day. His morning coffee comes out adequate, nothing surprising there. On the metro to work, he reads five books that he’s read before, learning nothing new but losing nothing either. The walk from the metro to the academy is amicable, the weather mild, the crowds moving with the same kind of content hurry that he is. In fact, it’s the beginning of what promises to be an average day, which is Reid’s favourite kind of day—mostly because the not-average days for him usually include anthrax or being kidnapped and forcibly injected with a habit-forming depressant.

He’s absolutely content, always, to be almost bored with life.

Continuing on with the theme of nothing being startling, he finds his desk exactly how he left it the night before, the cleaning staff having learned years ago that his reaction to his belongings being touched by strangers is to anxiously reorganise everything over and over just to be sure it’s all still there and how he likes it. There had been only so much of his wordless, sad-eyed woe that they’d been able to take before quietly adding a small note for those who work the sixth floor: _leave Dr. Reid’s desk alone, for the love of God_. Pleased with this, he settles in: jacket over his chair, computer humming awake, books organised along the side in order of author-year-subject-enjoyment, and then off to the kitchenette with his labelled mug in order to consume his second coffee for the morning before the clock ticks nine a.m. He likes to be early, and he likes to be _ready._ That’s the key to an entirely unsurprising day.

“Oh, here you are,” says a voice behind him, a voice that he smiles to hear even before turning to ask her if she wants coffee while he’s brewing. “Can you come to my office when you’re done, please? I have a favour to ask.”

Emily sounds harried and tired, like she’s been up for too long worrying, and that’s probably why she’s already hurrying away by the time he’s turned to look at her. Because of that, he doesn’t immediately register what he’s seeing; instead, he assumes that Emily has simply apparated from her spot behind him into thin air, being replaced instead with the back of a stranger’s head.

Puzzled, but not overly concerned, he doesn’t answer, just finishes pouring sugar into his coffee before stirring it in and making his way to Emily’s office, wondering if he should comment on her new vanishing act. He has half a quip in mind when he taps three and a half times at her door and leans in with a smile that’s the kind he saves just for her.

And, with that simple gesture, his normal, everyday, nothing-interesting kind of day comes to a very abrupt and startling end.

 

* * *

 

“Alright, I’ve been called away to present at a training conference in Atlanta early tomorrow,” Emily is apparently announcing to the assembled team around the round table, but Reid can’t listen because he’s too busy _looking._ “Since the budgets are coming in and they’re cutting corners, those pencil pushers on the budgetary committee have decided we can’t use the jet for it, so I’m driving. That means I’ll be out all today and tomorrow.”

“We’ll hold the fort,” Rossi is promising. He’s looking too, Reid notes, but almost certainly without the same off-kilter dizziness that’s assailing Reid. “You going alone?”

Reid knows the answer to this, Emily looking at him expectantly, but, much like the rest of today, he’s been struck dumb. Rolling her eyes at his uncharacteristic silence, she answers for him: “Nope. I’m taking Reid—I need someone to counter all the academics I’ll be expected to explain what we do to, justifying our existence to people who never leave their desks.” She sounds irate. A small part of Reid takes note of that. The rest keeps _looking_. “Besides, who better for a ten-hour road trip than Mr Audiobook himself?”

Reid becomes suddenly aware that everyone is now staring at him waiting for a response.

“Uh,” he says, tearing his eyes away from Emily and blinking at them. What were they saying? “Absolutely.”

“The budgets take our coffee too?” JJ asks. “You haven’t said a word all day.”

“Someone get him an IV, fast.” That’s Tara, and Reid frowns at her a little, ignoring Alvez’s snort.

“Come on, we all know what he’s looking at,” Alvez says, throwing his hands up at their determined stance of ignoring the absolutely unignorable. “Prentiss, what gives?”

“What?” Emily seems equally determined to ignore it too, meeting his stare with one that’s just as unshakable, mouth twitching up into an almost-smile that Reid recognises as her teasing one. It doesn’t help the battle in his brain between the part of him that has her firmly placed in the ‘friend and colleague’ box and the other part that’s reared up and reminded him that he has a dangerous attraction to, well, everything she is right now and has always been, but now especially. “You mean this?”

‘This’ is a haircut that’s savagely short, all her long, dark hair cropped completely. Sharp lines framing her face and leaving her features in stark profile, bringing his gaze, at first, directly to her eyes and mouth before being pulled away by the complete lack of anything hiding her throat or ears or shoulders. It’s blonde, which he’s not sure how he feels about besides remembering Lila and the pool with an uncomfortable flush of heat, but he can see her natural dark colouring showing through in a deliberate tinge that reminds him she’s still Emily, even if she’s shed the long hair and the razor-sharp bangs in favour of whatever this is.

He suspects that what this actually is is a haircut designed by some higher power purely to bring him to his knees, and he can never, ever tell her that.

“Nah, we mean your new belt,” Rossi drawls from his chair. “Of _course_ we mean the hair, Em, you’ve lost the lot. What inspired that?”

“I like it.” JJ, always the mediator.

“I like it too,” Reid rasps out but, thankfully, no one hears him to judge the way his voice cracks like he’s fifteen years old again and only just noticing the girls in his favourite movies and their penchant for smouldering looks and shy glances, often within the same scene.

“Come on, clearly the answer is that she’s joined Reid’s boyband,” Rossi is teasing, but Emily is laughing now.

“ _That_ is my business,” she warns them with a half-roll of her eyes that suggests she’s teasing now but won’t be if they push it. Almost self-consciously, her hand flicks to her ear to shove hair back from her face, hovering for a second too long as her brain skips and glitches over the lack of hair to be found there before she lowers it to her hip. “Now, I trust you’ll all use the time Reid and I are away productively—and _not_ to gossip about my hair.”

Reid doubts it, especially as Garcia walks in and does a double-take at their new short-haired, blonde unit chief. There’s zero chance this isn’t going to devolve into profiling as soon as they walk out of the room.

“Couldn’t think of anything we’d like to gossip about less,” Rossi lies happily as Emily sighs and leaves the room. Reid, once he’s sure it’s safe to stand, mutely follows, keeping his eyes down where they’ll be far safer—at least her shoes are still the same as they’ve always been.

 

* * *

 

The mild weather is gone. Emily doesn’t even ask before taking the driver’s seat, leaving him to slide his go-bag into the back of the SUV beside hers and clamber somewhat awkwardly into the passenger seat. As they pull out of the parking garage, it’s to find a foreboding sky waiting, cloudy and grim with a dark swell of storm clouds pushing over the horizon towards them. Reid watches the wind slowly begin to whip the trees they drive past into a frenzy and wonders where his normal, nothing-interesting day went while he was distracted by Emily being startling. They drive in a comfortable silence, Reid’s hands on his knees and his gaze locked out the window, the radio humming along with adverts and music he doesn’t cognitively process.

“Do you need to go home before we leave?” Emily asks out of nowhere, Reid’s hands twitching with surprise. When he snaps back to attention, they’re at a traffic light on red with the wipers slowly brushing small droplets of rain from the windshield and her gaze is flickering from the light to him expecting an answer. For a moment, he has to double back over his memory to find what she’d asked of him, once again distracted by the hair and the way she can’t hide behind the sway of it anymore, masking her eyes and mouth with a quick duck of her head.

“No thanks,” he says finally, forcing a smile. Hers lessens slightly and he looks down at his lap again, feeling like it’s three years ago and he’s the same awkward man he’s always been, instead of the person he is now who’d come through everything Cat Adams had thrown at him and become stronger because of it. It’s disconcerting to realise this same awkward, socially introverted being is still lurking inside his harder exterior—but he also suspects that Emily’s always going to have this effect on him. After all, the only thing he remembers from being in that Mexican prison cell is the sway of the light overhead and opening his eyes to find Emily looking at him and calling his name. Calling him home to them—and she’d never stopped calling, not really.

“Off we go then,” she says, turning up the radio without waiting for a reply from him and focusing completely on the road as the rain begins to fall in earnest. He nods, more to himself than her, and folds himself small with the heaters warm on his knees, locking himself away in his thoughts to puzzle over just why a haircut has changed her so suddenly in his eyes—and why the worst of it is how he can’t draw his gaze away from her mouth anymore.

 

* * *

 

It’s not really a nap but it’s very close to it, that edge-of-sleep relaxation where he’s distantly aware of his surroundings but his body is lax and out of his control: hypnagogic state, his brain supplies, the transitional period between wakefulness and sleep. Head kinked back against the seatbelt, he knows he’s sprawled back in the chair and breathing deeply, too close to asleep to worry about decorum. Mind wandering languidly, caught between the skip-beat of the radio and Emily half-humming, half-singing along, the time in between filled by almost-dreams. He’s startled awake twice by trucks sweeping past on the wet interstate, but right now the inside of the car is a warm, peaceful sanctum that smells of coffee—his—and perfume—Emily’s—and their leftover gas-station lunches.

His hand twitches once, the feeling of it thrumming up his arm. He’s aware of it, but not enough to react, his mind instead locking on Emily’s sudden laugh beside him. A warm hand touches his, settling over it and patting it back down.

“Sleepy rabbit,” he swears he hears her murmur, but that’s ridiculous. Why on earth would she say that?

“Hypnagogic jerk,” he mumbles back, his mouth dry and tongue clumsy and brain barely there.

Another laugh and the hand lifts away. He misses it, trying to open his eyes to follow where it’s going, but they don’t open and he drifts

 

* * *

 

He’s woken by a cold blast of air, jerking up to find Emily gone and her door just barely closed. They’re at a rest stop, nothing more than a couple of rainswept benches, a trashcan, a block of public toilets, and a few neglected bushes lining the roadside. Regaining his equilibrium, Reid wraps his coat closer and waits for Emily to sprint back through the rain from the bathrooms to the car before making his own dash, legs sore and refusing to cooperate with him until he does a half-jog, half-dance around the empty bathroom with his shoes squeaking on the tiled floor. Definitely awake now—if not by the rain, then definitely by the ice-cold water he rinses his hands with—and when he slides back into the car, it’s like sinking into a pool of warm water, hands tingling as cold meets heat.

“Brisk, huh?” says Emily.

Reid answers, “Yeah,” and doesn’t get any further because he’s looked at her again and is kicking himself for doing so: her hair is whipped around by the wind, stuck into playful spikes in a wild halo around her head that only makes her seem younger and more alive to his eyes, mouth red even under the demure lipstick that he can see she’s been working at with her teeth. There’s a single wet lock of hair hanging over her forehead, completely out of place, and he’s never wanted anything more than to lean across and brush it back where it belongs, where she wants it, except maybe to ask shyly if he can slip his fingers through those short, damp spikes of hair to feel if it’s as fun to touch as it looks.

A brush of memory and he’s burning hot, coughing and looking away to hide how his cheeks are burning with him; he’s remembered what he was dreaming of before her open door had dragged him sharply back into the present. Snippets of warm skin and a smooth voice whispering soft things against him as he kissed along the sharp lines of her short hair, just enough to hang onto as she’d pulled him down with her.

Thankful he’d woken up before the dream had solidified beyond manic whimsy and straight into pure lust, he hears her sigh and turn up the radio again.

This is going to ruin him.

 

* * *

 

“Do you hate it?” Emily asks suddenly, so smoothly going from singing—badly—to interrogating him that it takes him a moment to choke down his soda and answer her.

“Your singing?” he responds, not sure how to wiggle out of answering what feels like a trap.

Those dark eyes pin him for a beat too long. “No, you,” she says. ‘You’ is said with fond exasperation, but he feels like he’s been slapped anyway, juggling the lid back onto his soda and diverting the hot air from the vents away from his skin to try and cool down. “My hair. You’ve been a weirdo all day, ever since you saw it.”

“I’m always a weirdo.”

“Weirder than usual. You hate it, don’t you?”

No, he doesn’t, he really, really doesn’t—but he does hate the whisper of insecurity in her tone right now. Hates that he put it there, and hates that someone like her could _ever_ be made to feel that way. It’s not like she’s… well, it’s not like she’s him.

“I really don’t,” he says. It’s barely four o’clock outside, but Emily has the headlights on already. She has to; it’s darkening fast out there, the rain turning from a steady thrum to a thick curtain that swallows them and means that the only hint of oncoming traffic they have is the glimmer of headlights in the haze. “It’s very you.”

Another glare. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

It’s starting to feel like he’s on the wrong foot here, fumbling what should be easy questions and turning them complex and multi-faceted, and he suspects that’s because he needs to tell the truth but not the _entire_ truth. The truth: he loves the courage this haircut would have taken and he loves the woman with the passion to take that step, despite her forward-facing position within the BAU. The entire truth: the teenage boy inside of him _really_ loves the haircut, and he refuses to bow to the primal sexualisation his brain is trying to force onto her.

He takes the plunge, resting his soda between his thigh and the centre console and taking his turn to stare at her intently, knowing she’ll profile his earnestness in the heartbeat between looking at him and back at the road. “It means it’s surprising,” he says with absolute honesty. “It’s new and exciting and downright startling to see—when I saw you this morning, I lost all equilibrium because something I’d decided was firmly cemented in my understanding of the world suddenly wasn’t that thing anymore.”

Emily snorts. “Like Hotch coming to work in lycra shorts,” she teases. “Or Alvez in a skirt. That kind of startling, you mean.”

“No.” He doesn’t. “Not that… that kind of shock is from someone defying norms. You’re not defying norms, not contemporary societal ones, anyway. There’s nothing scandalous about a haircut, no matter how short or bright. You’re defying yourself. I… I _love_ that.”

She’s watching the road with fixed focus as the rain and the wind combine to slam against them. He’s starting to worry they’re going to be washed out, despite the radio having told them before to expect only fast-moving showers—not this squall he can feel pressing the car back. “I’m not defying anyone,” she argues. “It’s a haircut, Spence. Don’t overthink it.”

“You worry that people see you as old,” he says simply. “Yet you’ve chosen a hairstyle designed to draw attention to your face, your eyes, your mouth. It’s captivating.”

“Captivating?” There’s a laugh in her voice that burns him again, pulling back in his seat and resettling the belt against his chest, feeling like there isn’t quite enough air in this car for everyone in it—him and her and all their expectations. “Are you captivated by me, Dr Reid?”

The correct answer is no.

The honest answer is yes.

He’s not her, and he’s not brave enough to draw attention to what he perceives as his flaws, so he does the coward’s thing and says nothing. And he probably wouldn’t have gotten away with it, if that hadn’t been the exact moment Emily almost hit the goat.

 

* * *

 

He’s pretty sure that Hotch would have never said “Fuck them, they can wait,” about a conference that they’re definitely expected to attend, and especially not because he’s busy trying to rescue a baby goat. Reid, always easily mislead and also a little concerned about the goat, doesn’t really argue with Emily when she declares they need to see if their almost-roadkill is okay, just trudges after her into the storm with the wind ripping at him and almost blind from the rain. Behind them, he can just see the hazy shape of their SUV parked on the verge, the hazard lights blinking methodically. Ahead of them, he can hear frantic bleating leading them further into the scrub.

“Are you sure the goat actually needs help?” he calls into the wind, hearing Emily shout back a harried, “Yes!” Shrugging, he decides to take her word for it, wishing he’d worn a coat with a hood.

They follow the goat into the muddy brush, Reid slipping and sliding along every small incline turned into a waterlogged slide designed to turn ankles and splatter his nice clothes with gunk. Before long, his legs are scratched and bitten by thorns, pants absolutely ruined, hair stuck to his head in a wet, weighty mess, and hands bleeding from catching himself before hitting the ground and probably sinking forever. Emily isn’t looking much better, stepping forward boldly and yelping as she vanishes from sight. Unlike her earlier vanishing act, this one sounds panicked, so Reid reacts—leaping forward, he grabs her coat by the back with one hand and wraps his other one around her, lifting her up and out of the hole she’d almost tumbled into and barely noting her weight for the split second she’s in his arms.

But she barely seems to notice that he’d, at the very least, saved her decorum, shaking rain from her eyes and peering down into the gluggy hole that’s rapidly filling with brackish water, to the miserable looking goat kid perched on some kind of steel blade thrust down there, bleating sadly with his little goat beard dripping along.

“That’s a big hole,” Reid notes warily, eyeing the sides of the hole. There’s no structural integrity to it, and he rapidly calculates how deep it could be based on the dimensions of the walls and the rate of rainfall multiplied by the hours it’s been raining. The answer is: too deep, and the goat won’t be the only one in danger if they end up down there with it.

“He’s going to drown,” Emily says, which is true. Even as they watch, his small hooves slip on the blade, and he almost slides down into the water, the churning under him suggesting that there’s a small sinkhole effect in play here, caused by the waterlogged soil and the weight of the farmland trash down there. “Are you armed?”

He blinks. “No? Why? Do you want me to _shoot_ it?”

The expression on her face might have been funny if the situation wasn’t quite so dire. “No, what? Jeez, Reid, no—I needed to know if you’d ruin your gun going down there.”

He looks at the hole. Looks at her. Looks at the goat.

Looks down at his clothes.

“Why me?” he asks finally, resigned.

“Because,” she says with dangerous finality, “you’re far taller than I am. And your shoes are covered—we don’t know what’s down there. I’d hang you over the edge to grab him, but that edge is going to collapse any minute now.”

“But animals don’t like me…”

She beams at him, the smile bright despite her almost blue lips, the cold chilling them all as their clothes give up their valiant attempts at shedding water and just take all the rain unto themselves. “This one will after you rescue him. Right, Goaty?”

“Meeeehhhh,” wails the goat.

 

* * *

 

By the time they get both Reid and George-the-Goat, as Emily has titled him, out of the hole, it’s not just rain-dark—it’s actual-dark and the storm is doing nothing but worsening. There’s a serious concern about the road washing out and, even if there wasn’t, Reid’s never felt colder or dirtier with every muscle screaming at him about how stupid he is for thrashing about in a pit of water chasing a goat that had seemed to _want_ to drown down there. He stands by the car with his most morose expression in place, his arms wrapped around Emily’s coat which is, in turn, wrapped around George-the-Goat, just doing nothing but feeling bone-shakingly cold and wishing he wasn’t carrying half the hole back in his shoes. Emily is barely visible leaning into the SUV, hand curled around her cell as she calls back to update whoever cares on their non-arrival.

“What are we going to do with you?” he tries to ask the goat, but nothing comes out, just more teeth-chattering sounds and what sounds like half a sob.

He misses this morning.

“We’re done for the night, Spence,” Emily calls, popping up out of the car and looking at him, her voice only just carrying over the rain. “The storm is worse up ahead, and you can’t sit like that for another four hours. Plus, we have him.”

They both look at George, who bleats glumly and tries to cuddle closer to Reid, too cold to even attempt to eat Emily’s coat.

“What do we do with him?” Reid chatters out.

“Take him with us until we can call around in the morning and look for where he came from, I guess. There’s a motel up ahead—I didn’t spend my teenage years sneaking in and out of my mother’s house without learning a thing or two about sneaking a goat _in_.” Emily is smirking, but he’s never really sure with her. “Just put him in the back for now. He’s probably too cold to do anything back there.”

It’s a fair supposition; Reid’s cold enough that he’s pretty unable to do anything either, which includes opening his door without his fingers hurting from bending them or buckling his own seatbelt which Emily ends up doing for him, but it’s also an _incorrect_ supposition. By the time they reach the motel, Reid longingly thinking of a hot shower, a change of clothes, and a long sleep, George-the-Goat has claimed the last victim of Reid’s absolutely not-normal or mild or unsurprising day.

“Oh no,” is all Reid can say, looking down at the thoroughly eaten remains of both his and Emily’s bag, the clothes within a lovely mix of either chewed on, peed on, or rolled on. “Oh _no_.”

“I vote we eat him,” is all Emily suggests.

Reid’s not totally against the idea himself.

 

* * *

 

The one bright spot of being frozen half to death: at least there’s nothing remotely appealing about the idea of sex or even other people in general when he’s too cold to even think and his genitals feel like they’ve retracted inside his body at the sheer idea of being exposed to air. Emily’s hair isn’t half as captivating when it’s reminding him vividly that they’re both soaked through and without a change of clothes, working together in silence to bathe their secret goat in the small hotel bath and with their clothes barely drying in the damp air of the unheated bathroom. There’s a space heater in the other room, but the motel had apologised and told them their actual heating was out of order—right before adding that the only room they had free was a shared one with two singles.

At least if he’s too cold to be happy, he probably won’t dream of her. Silver lining, of a sort.

“Sorry,” Emily says suddenly, dribbling water on the goat as he tries to grab her sleeve and eat it, mud and all. “Sometimes I just act without thinking and… fuck, Reid, I couldn’t let it die. It _would_ have died if we hadn’t found it, running on the interstate like that.”

“S’alright,” he mumbles. “I’ll cheer up once we eat. And shower. And…” He looks down at his clothes, then to the pile of clothes behind him, hers and his mixed—and if he hadn't been so grumpy, _that_ would be a sight—that hadn’t survived George’s ferocity. “And… put these clothes back on.” Even as he resigns himself to it, a clump of mud slides down his thigh and falls to the ground with a nauseating ‘splat’.

“Sorry,” she says again despite that, looking just as miserable as he is, which only serves to add an ache to his chest as well as the rest of him. “How about you shower first, huh? I’ll dry Mr George off and feed him peanuts, or something. Goats eat peanuts, right?”

“You’re vastly overestimating my knowledge of the dietary needs of goats,” he says, watching as she lifts the goat free of the bath and into a towel, carrying him from the room and back into the other. Standing hurts, moving hurts more, and he slowly, like the old man he’s threatening to become, hobbles to the shower to find that, yes, showering hurts just as much as everything else, if not more.

 

* * *

 

It’s about the point that he’s warm and cosy in front of the heater with George asleep in his lap that Reid forgives him for everything. After all, he’s just a baby, and a cute one at that, having fallen asleep suckling at Reid’s fingers with his little goaty eyes turned up in a smile. Reid can even forgive him for the fact that he’d had to face up to the impossibility of getting his clothes back on, finding a complimentary bathrobe in the closet and donning that instead. It’s thick and soft and warm from the heater and he could probably curl up and go to sleep like this if it wasn’t for the danger of sudden combustion.

Emily emerges from the shower in a waft of soap-scent and steam, Reid looking over at her and feeling a worrying jolt as he realises she’s given up on her clothes as well, dressed exactly as he is in a bathrobe that’s too big for her, with the addition of a towel wrapped around her hair. Pink-faced and looking calmer than she had before, she smiles guiltily when she sees him, a smile that vanishes when she sees his ankles and bare feet poking out from under the robe. “Reid! You’re bleeding!”

So he is. He hadn’t really noticed the sting of the cuts on his legs, what with the agony that’s every one of his muscles cramping right now. Maybe she sees the way he winces to move, or maybe she just _knows_ the same way she knows everything else he’s feeling—although, not _everything_ , he hopes—because she vanishes back into the bathroom and returns with a first aid kit he assumes was in her go-bag, not in the motel cupboard.

“Give me him.” She takes George carefully, taking him to the bathroom and returning without him, door closed behind her. He wonders what she did with him, but is too sore to ask, watching in mute misery as she pads barefoot back over to him and sits cross-legged beside him on the floor, the movement offering a tantalising glimpse of bare legs as her robe splits and shifts.

“Are you certified to administer first-aid?” he asks her with a smile he doesn’t feel, forcing it so she knows his grumpiness isn’t aimed at her.

“I’m certified to kick your ass if you bitch.”

That’s a pretty clear message; he stays quiet while she works, even though the antiseptic burns and the scratches go a dangerous way up his legs, carefully hitching the bathrobe the barest amount needed for her to reach every scratch—and no further.

“Muscle ache?” she asks.

He can’t lie; his every move is accompanied with a hitched inhale and slow exhale.

“A little.”

“Where?”

The answer is ‘everywhere’, but he doesn’t think she’ll appreciate that. “Shoulders. Calves. Back…” He trails off, rubbing his cramping arm. He blames the cold water and the force with which they’d had to haul him out of that hole, the rain and mud trying to suck him back down and fighting him every step of the way.

“Want me to help?” She says it in a voice that’s calm, her eyes telling him that he can say no without hurting her here. There’s a tube of mentholatum in her hands that he _wants_ and probably couldn’t say no to even if he wanted to. He settles on staring longingly, torn between wanting not to hurt and not wanting her hands on his bare skin so intimately.

“Spence.” Her voice is soft, hushed despite the thudding rain outside and the hum of the heater casting an orange glow on their skin. “Let me help.”

“But…” He trails off. How can he say it? Her dark eyes watch him from under the towel, hands just visible from the overlong sleeves.

“I know.”

Does she? He hopes not.

But suspects she does.

Instead of arguing, he lets her shuffle forward, nabbing blankets from the bed to lay flat on the floor. Letting her guide him down onto his belly on those blankets, a pillow under his head, and letting her slip the bathrobe down just enough to get to his shoulders and arms. It’s not comfortable, for him or her, as she tries to work around the springy material before it bunches back up, but he knows she’s trying her best to accommodate his discomfort.

It’s him who takes the step, realising that the businesslike touch of her hands on him isn’t anywhere near as mortifying as he’d worried. She’s working the cream into his biceps and he’s feeling nothing but a thin shred of relief through the sharp-edged ache. It’s a friend helping a friend and that’s all it feels like, and that’s what gives him the courage to straighten a little and shrug the bathrobe down out of the way, looping it around his waist tighter before lying back down. Breath coming fast and chest feeling tight; her eyes on him are burning because he hates this, being seen. It’s as terrifying as her cutting her hair must have been, as he imagines the disgruntled twist to her mouth at his visible ribs or the soft touch of fat around his stomach or the ungainly jut of his hips.

“Calm down, doc,” she says quietly, hands working on. He calms.

He can’t ignore her when she orders him like that.

By the time she’s done with his shoulders and back, he’s a sleepy mess of a profiler, eyes closed against the pillow and pretty sure he’s going to fall asleep again. George is quiet, which he’s sure would bother him more if he had the parental instincts to mistrust silence, but right now it just feels like a blessing. Emily’s strokes on his skin have slowed, less massaging the heat cream in and more just stroking _him_ , her touch changing somehow to become softer, tenderer.

More dangerous.

He’s not asleep anymore, feeling her hands lift and lay flat on the small of his back, her small fingertips tracing the line above his hips right along to where his pelvic bone rests. Heartbeat quickening, he wants her to stop. He wants her to keep going. He wants to stop his body from stupidly expecting her to keep going, and he especially wants to stop himself from getting harder against the soft blankets below him.

She leans low, hands still tracing up his spine, like she’s counting the vertebrae until stopping on the fifth thoracic. Breath on the back of his neck; he feels the touch of that air brush his skin and bury itself deep in his body, building up speed as it goes until it’s zipped right down to his dick and caused a jolt he’s sure is going to be catastrophic. But she’s not done: “I can do your legs.”

He swallows. Rasps. Swallows again. Shifts his legs. “It would react badly with any broken skin,” he finally manages, and her hand pauses like she’s thinking of reaching down to mark the area she wants to touch. He almost feels the sweep of her eyes burning right down him to settle on his ass under the cotton-blend robe. Danger, danger, his body is screaming, and he makes the mistake of thinking of her expression under the savage new haircut and hopes the bathrobe hides the damp spot he feels starting in response.

“You don’t have any scratches on your thighs.”

Oh god. He closes his eyes and thinks of the cold, the rain, his former grumpiness, math.

“That… would be a mistake, Em.” The crack and pitch of his voice leave him nowhere to hide. There’s no way she can’t see it written all over him, from the tight set of his shoulders to the way he’s holding his legs.

If she whispers, “A fantastic mistake,” he does her the favour of not reacting to it, because he doesn’t ever want to be anyone’s mistake, no matter how fantastic. And in her normal voice, “Through the bathrobe? Even if I can loosen the muscles a little, you’ll be better for it in the morning.”

He knows she’s telling the truth, even if both their motives are ulterior. But her skin won’t be touching his—it’ll be fine. Professional, even. Right?

He nods.

It’s worse than he could have imagined. She returns from washing her hands and the massage helps, it honestly does. Sore enough that he yelps a bit at first as she finds the worst of his bunched muscles, but then gloriously relaxing. He’s tensed tight until he’s forced to uncoil, focused so deeply on her hands and where they are as they work up the back of his leg and closer to his optimistically energetic dick—she doesn’t even bother asking him to roll over, they both know he’s not going to move anytime soon even if he has to nail himself to this floor to ensure it—that he doesn’t even notice he’s feeling good until the softest of moans slips from his mouth, startling them both. He twitches back into focus, cheeks flushed and self-conscious as hell.

Emily stops what she’s doing and breathes out an “Oh my god,” which isn’t at all hard to read. And that’s it for him—he’s definitely going to be on this floor hiding his erection until the end of time, because he knows the pitch of a woman’s voice when they’re aroused and that’s _it._ As soon as he’s noted that, his mind is alive, whispering every tantalising thought to him possible—is she thinking of sex with him, does she know he’s hard, does she want him to moan again, is there a _chance_ , is she we—

He thumps his head against the pillow, trying to smother the thoughts away and body throbbing in time with his heartbeats.

“All done,” Emily whispers. Her voice is husky, a throaty hum that almost drags another groan from him. He hears her shift away slightly, taking the chance to look up and at her, finding her pulling the towel from her head. A flurry of cotton and hands and then she’s shaking her damp hair free, spiked from the shower and settling neatly around the curve of her skull. Back to him, all he can see is damp hair and the swoop of her neck, the curve of an ear, the shape of her jaw when she goes to turn towards him and pauses.

She tries to make a joke. “Left my hairdryer at home, which may have been a mistake. How good are you at hair drying?”

His heart clutches tight, everything else inside him tightening with it. He sits up, slowly, dazed and hungry and knowing she’s not really offering him this but that he’d do anything for her to be. “I can try,” he says and, well, damn. He didn’t mean for it to come out like _that_ , not in _that_ kind of voice. Reid’s never been suave and the few times he’s managed to coax someone into his bed, he’s been all hands and no decorum… and he’s certainly never managed _that_ tone, where he’s made something as innocent as helping her dry her hair sound like it’s all he’s ever needed. Like he’s already inside her.

And she’s heard it. He watches her breathe in and stop, her shoulders stiff and her body tight. He watches as she doesn’t exhale before turning and looking at him. All of him. He’s kneeling, open. Visible.

She hands him the towel.

“Go ahead,” she challenges.

 

* * *

 

The towel doesn’t last long. He rubs it in soft patterns across her hair until letting it slip from his hands, kneeling behind her as she sits in front of him with her gaze locked lazily on the wall across the room. Not even a little surprised when he replaces the towel with his fingers, threading them through the short, silky locks and scenting the wafts of shampoo it lets loose as he teases it out with a trembling hand. And then the other, nails scratching gently across her scalp, finding all the new ways her hair sits now there’s so much less of it. Tracing down the curve of her skull, finding the line where her hairline has been clipped into shape. Following that line down along her skin, tracing her shoulder, back up and around her ear.

He’s captivated. He’s not sure he’s even breathing anymore, as lost in this as he ever has been in any act of learning in his life. Every inch of his needled focus on the task at hand, which is learning every part of Emily that she’s newly bared to him.

“Sit straight,” she tells him suddenly, waiting until he’s rearranged himself before continuing. “Back to the bed, by the heater. Use the pillow. I need to lean on something.”

Dangerous. So dangerous. But he does it, his back against the side of the bed, the heater to their side, and Emily seated between his legs. He has to push the bathrobe aside to do so but there’s little danger of her craning her head around to see within the bunched-up material on his lap, and it does a better job hiding him than it had flat. They’re not touching, except for his hands, for all that she’d cited wanting to lean on him.

They’re not touching, until they are. Emily inclines back, her shoulder to his chest, closing her eyes and sighing a little as he continues massaging her scalp in much the same way she’d done for him before, being careful to do so in the most pleasurable way possible. “You’ve got such magic hands,” she tells him in a drowsy voice, the rain lulling them both in this timeless moment.

Shoulder to chest, her head on his shoulder, his hands on her hair; that’s all the points they’re touching. He lets his hands drift down, watching her hair settle into loose lines with the ends flicked up from his teasing, curling those hands over her shoulders and feeling her arch up into them. He’s not the only one sore, and remembers with a surge of guilt how hard she’d heaved to pull him up and out of the hole.

“Jesus, _fuck_ , that’s great,” is her almost-snarled response. “Keep going.”

He does, even though every time she twists into his touches brings her body just that bit closer against his, only the bathrobes between them. By the time she’s as pliable under his hands as he’d been under hers, she’s tucked up dangerously against him; all he can smell, feel, _know_ , is her. His body is on fire with it, and all it would take would be him dipping his mouth and nose just a little and he could rest against her gorgeous hair.

Later, he’ll blame being overtired; right now, he doesn’t overthink it. He just does it. Brings his mouth to her hair and breathes the softest kiss imaginable against the crooked parting.

She goes still in his arms and, for a second, his heart gallops so fast that he knows she can feel it. But she doesn’t let him pull away in the rush of fear that follows; instead, she catches his hand in hers and holds it tight. “It’s okay,” she says in a voice like a sigh, so he does it again. And she narrates every kiss with, “It’s okay,” even as he slides closer and uses his proximity to drift those kisses down the same line he’d traced with his fingers before: the top bump of her spine, the back of her neck, the line of her shoulder where it smoothly traces down into chest. By the time he’s close enough that he can brush the barest touch of lips against her sharp jaw, she can feel him. All of him.

“How long have you been this hard?” she asks. He wonders if she feels the rush of heat those words have surged through him, whether it’s translated through his lips or his hands on hers or on the point of her lower back where he’s throbbing against her.

“Since you touched me the first time,” he admits, closing his eyes and feeling his lashes brush her jaw as he dips and mouths at the throat she bares to him. Her head tilted back, no hair between him and her, and his hands pull her tight without his conscious control, hips shifting hopefully.

“That’s the first time?”

His anxious huff of air blows hot against her skin, so he follows it with a flick of his tongue before biting down, driven more by desire and instinct than knowledge of her body right now. “This morning,” he rasps against her bitten skin, finishing with a kiss. “When I realised it was you, your hair, how much it bares of you… that was the first time. Today.”

When he adds ‘today’, she shivers.

“I should have fucked you years ago,” he swears he hears her say, but that can’t be right, can it?

Maybe he could have asked her to clarify, but that’s the exact moment the power goes out with a whine and a startled bleat from the bathroom, plunging them into the dark. Reid twitches, almost softening with surprise before lurching to his feet, all senses on overdrive. Emily’s up too, catching his hand as the brisk air away from the now-cooling heater hits them both.

“Hey, it’s okay,” she says quickly, pressing by so close that he feels her leg brush his dick on the way, brain short-circuiting as it tries to work out which stimuli to focus on. “Looks like the street is out. It’s pitch-black out there. Going to get cold.”

He nods, looking to the bathroom. “George?” he asks, right before he finds himself with an armful of Emily on her tiptoes to reach, leaning up to cup his mouth with her hands and bring it to hers.

He forgets everything in that moment. Forgets the goat in their bathroom, forgets the storm. Forgets the cold and his insecurity, forgets that they’re technically supposed to be travelling to Atlanta. Forgets professionality. Just opens his mouth to her and feels her take that invitation, her tongue as quick and curious as the rest of her, her body warm on his, her lips knowing every shift of his before he makes it. They kiss like they’ve been kissing for years, like it’s definitely not their first, and he’s only aware that her hands have shifted from his face when a cool breeze replaces the warmth of his robe as she unties it and steps in. In the quiet dark, the first he knows of her plan is the wild heat of knowing hers is untied too, the cool once again replaced with warmth, but this time _hers_. She’s naked against him, her breasts against his chest, her arms wrapping around him to pull him close to her in the comforting embrace of their bathrobes, even as they stand in the middle of the darkened room with their mouths meeting again and again. He couldn’t stop kissing her even if he'd wanted to, his whole body savage with a need to touch, to feel her overcome again like she’d been when he’d moaned so unexpectedly. And the entire time, he’s shockingly aware that his dick is hard and pressed against her stomach, that there’s nothing he can do to take this back when before he’d been shy about even showing his shoulders.

Maybe it’s the dark that makes it easier, or maybe it’s the knowledge that he can be brave too, sometimes.

She wins the race to undo the other, sliding a hand down and wrapping it around him. At the first touch of her fingers on him, he’s gone; when she strokes down him slowly and then tightens her grip, his knees go weak. One of his hands curled through her hair, the other supporting himself, he tries to breathe without her hearing it and instead makes the most embarrassing sound as she strokes him again and gets a wet flush of pre-come for her trouble. Can’t help but bite that sound off as, instead of pulling away or wiping her hand, she just slides her thumb over him and uses the mess to make him slick, to move her hand quicker, to get his hips swaying in turn with her.

“One bed will be warmer,” she says like there’s any chance they were going to end up in two after this. “I hope you talk as much during sex as you do outside of it. I want to hear you.”

 

* * *

 

He’s never talked during sex before, but he does that night because she asks it of him. They tumble into the one bed, the springs loud enough under them that Reid’s already embarrassed for their poor neighbours. Emily doesn’t seem to notice, her bathrobe joining his in a puddle on the floor and her legs wrapping around his hips. They’re flush together before he has a chance to think and she’s exactly as wet as his brain had lewdly hoped earlier this night. He can’t help but rock up into that heat as she rolls her hips down, feeling his dick slide along the line of her, hands coming up to stroke down her back and try to coax her down against him. But she fights him, rolling him into the bed with her until they’re both on their sides with their legs tangled and mouths together, and his hands have somehow found their way back to her hair, guiding her mouth onto his with the softest of touches even as he aches between her legs with how much he wants to bury himself in her.

“I can’t look away from you when you’re like this,” he gasps into her mouth, nipping at her lower lip, sliding down, finding her throat and searching to find a spot that makes her heart skip against his skin. “You’re so beautiful. Nothing hiding you, all I can see is you. Your eyes and your mouth and your smile and, _fuck_.”

She jolts and he feels a trickle of wet around his dick that isn’t his as she responds to either his mouth breathing words against her throat or the words he’s actually saying. “Touch me when you say that,” she hisses, hand grabbing his and pulling it between her legs. “There. Like that. Again.”

His thumb and finger on her clit, he teases it between them, careful not to hurt her as he pulls her tight and says in a voice that’s more of a growl, “Even in the dark, all I can see is you. My memory for you is etched into my mind, every line on your face you resent, every hint of age. I love it all. I want it all. I want to look at you when I fuck you—” She jolts again, and moans, and he starts to worry he’s not going to make this the whole way through with how unexpectedly titillating that rounded voice _moaning_ is. “—I want to see you when you come like you’re about to, aren’t you?”

“Don’t stop doing exactly that,” she responds. He doesn’t, just keeps up the same rhythm of finger and thumb as he rolls them gently, the springs complaining below them, until he’s above her and noting the lack of dark shadow her hair _would_ leave if it was still there, haloed on the pillow around her.

“All I’ve wanted to do all day is sleep with you,” he tells her. Kisses her shoulder, rasps, “I dreamed of it in the car. Woke up before I could come in you and, ahh, I was so hard I didn’t know how you could miss it.”

“I didn’t,” is the expected response. “I knew. That’s why I stopped. I stopped because, _fuck_ , I wanted to, _fuck_. Spence, Spence, _Spence.”_ He doesn’t need her chanting his name, he knows, using the hand not coaxing her over to thread tight through her hair and lift her head so their mouths slot neatly together, feeling the way her breathing changes as she comes against him, as she trembles to a stop, but not completely. When he pulls away, her eyes are on him and they’re wide enough to drown in. “I’m safe, just go,” she says, so he does exactly what she’s been wanting him to do since the car and presses his cock to her, nudging in so painfully slowly that she’s cussing him out before he even has the head in.

And he’s never had sex with someone without a condom before because he’s never trusted anyone like he trusts Emily, so everything he’s feeling is stunningly new. The warmth and the wetness and the tight heat. The way he can feel her _living_ around him, muscles resisting him at first but slowly welcoming him, drawing him deeper. He’s not sure where his hands are. He doesn’t know what his mouth is doing, except probably making a fool of himself by narrating this. He does know that Emily’s hands are on his hips and she’s trying to pull him in, to guide him to pushing harder into her, but he’s not ready to be rough with her. Will probably never will be, at least, it doesn’t feel like it right now.

When he manages to focus on her, she’s watching him with something awed in her eyes. “You look lost,” she tells him.

“I should have answered before,” he says. “I am always and absolutely captivated by you.”

And then he’s not sure what else he says, because his brain gives up and gives in and reduces him for the next few minutes of blissful, animal ignorance to nothing but a body and a heart struggling to give her everything she wants of him and more. It draws out in his mind despite the way time speeds around them, every fast stroke of his hips into her a heartbeat, every stroke out an eternity, until he’s obeying nothing but the whims of his body and her hands as his entire body stutters and pulls tight. It takes three slow, deep thrusts deep into her, her body arched up against him and her nails patterning his back in soft stripes that he’s going to love the burn of when he touches them next until he does exactly what he promised and gives her everything. And then they’re bound in exhaustion and their shared messes, delighted to have been so gloriously human together.

 

* * *

 

In the morning, there’s warmth. It’s stunning. He just wants to curl into it and sink down forever until he can sleep in comfort for the rest of his life, never feeling cold or lonely… and so he does, burrowing deeper into that warmth until there’s a disgruntled noise from above him and two cold hands poke at his shoulders.

“Stop nuzzling into my chest,” Emily grumbles. “It’s not cute, despite you pretending to snore.”

“Gnha?” Reid manages, feeling the skin against his nose shift as she exhales a laugh.

“Oh my god, you’re actually sleep-nuzzling my tits. What _are_ you?”

“Warm,” he replies, curling tighter. “Gnight…”

And he drifts some more, paying no attention to her curious, “How can someone so _long_ compact so _well_ ,” as she prods at the tiny ball of him that he’s become in his quest to find the warmth he was born to.

When he wakes again, it’s to the world’s loudest bleating noise. Thinking, at first, that Emily has somehow hurt herself in some obscurely horrible way, he jerks upright and rolls for his bedside cupboard, as though fumbling for the weapon he didn’t bring on this trip. Emily is laughing at him as he overshoots and rolls right from the bed with a yowl, taking all the blankets and sheets with him. Peering over the edge like a slightly pointy cat, she raises both eyebrows at him lying down there, naked and sprawled and so very confused as to what that sound is.

“George is awake,” she says first, looking down him. “And so are you, hello.”

He looks down too.

“You’re not even a little bit a professional, are you?” he asks her with every bit of dignity he can muster, flipping the blankets around his body and stalking off to the bathroom to both pee and see if George is still alive, or if he’s consumed himself in a fit of ruminate rage.

“Says the man with the erection,” she calls after him.

It’s about mid toilet break, as Reid battles with both his determined erection and the curious goat trying to bite him, that he realises just how much trouble they’re in. Back out to the room he goes after washing his hands, finding Emily sprawled on the bed with the heating humming happily, as though she doesn’t care an inch that they’re late and naked and in custody of a baby goat.

“We need to find George’s home,” he says redundantly, George himself skipping past and leaving a trail of droppings that Reid edges his bare feet away from. “Before we get kicked out for having a secret goat.”

“Uh huh,” says Emily.

“We also need to clean our clothes…” This is said with misery, as he looks to his clothes and thinks that maybe nothing in the world that exists currently is powerful enough to clean them.

“Yup.”

“And we need to get to the conference, which is four hours away, in…” He checks. “Three hours.”

“We sure do.”

There’s a long beat of silence as they look at each other, Reid anxiously waiting and Emily tossing her cell aside to focus completely on him.

“How about this,” she begins, and he relaxes. Here it is, the plan that will save the day and their asses from being smote by Rossi wondering where they'd gone when they'd vanished off the map, together. It doesn’t take a profiler— “We put the bathrobes on and walk those clothes over to the laundry here, okay?” He nods. Sounds good. “And then we come back and put George back in the bathroom with something to chew on.” He nods, slower. Okay? “And then we fuck the conference off so we can fuck each other until our clothes are done and we can go find George a home, huh? How’s that sound?”

He stares at her. Then at George. Then at her again. And he says, “You’re not really much like Hotch, are you?” She laughs darkly, but doesn’t answer and, in the end, he cuts his losses and gets back in the bed with her. At least he’s sure she probably won’t fire him for this. Probably.

Unlike Hotch.

**Author's Note:**

> I love to hear from you guys. Leave a comment or come chat with us on the [Criminal Minds Discord server](https://discord.gg/kPxKjaE) (don't be shy by how quiet we are--we love new people to talk to!). I also run weekly rewatch threads both on the server and over at the /r/[criminalminds on Reddit](https://www.reddit.com/r/criminalminds/), so come along and join in the small community there. Hope to see some new faces!


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